Seven years in Waziristan

The pub­lic eye has turned on Waziris­tan once again, that famed, fabled and feared tribal region between Pak­istan and Afghanistan. In my for­ma­tive years, I was never informed about Waziris­tan, never even heard of it to be quite hon­est, and in the media the area is pre­sented as if we are speak­ing of an exo-planet or another extremely remote colony — whereas it has of course been here dur­ing all that time, we just hap­pened to pay no par­tic­u­lar atten­tion. As it turns out, it is not with­out risk to for­get for­ma­tive episodes in his­tory, and Waziris­tan really has quite an impres­sive his­tory of war and ‘con­flicts’, as they are called nowa­days. These Waziris­tani wars, often fought with the British colo­nial pow­ers, are now com­ing back to haunt us, which makes the ghost-like image of a tank — such a sym­bol of mod­ern war­fare — all the more omi­nous. This, too, can be the power of pho­tog­ra­phy. But there is more omi­nos­ity — to coin the word — to be encoun­tered in the 1935–1936 Raz­mak album of gen­eral U.C. Dubey, who fought for the British and was sta­tioned in the region for seven years.

The cap­tion of this lately quite top­i­cal and not all that his­tor­i­cal look­ing image reads thus: “a typ­i­cal Waziri tribesman in a happy mood, with his loaded rifle, knife and chap.” A happy mood?

Despite being not that exten­sive, the Raz­mak col­lec­tion from the Aditya Arya Archive does con­tain imagery that could have been as renowned as Roger Fenton’s, had it not been of one of these ‘for­got­ten’ wars, of which there are far too many on this planet.

6 thoughts on “Seven years in Waziristan”

You have a print of this? That’s amaz­ing! As far as I can tell based on stu­pid Google research, the pho­tographs from the album are all cour­tesy of gen­eral Dubey. In the arti­cle I linked to, it speaks of a col­lec­tion made by him of snaps taken by army pho­tog­ra­phers. So maybe it was your father who took it. Maybe it was given to him by a mate? I assume he is no longer around to ask. The mys­tery might remain for now.

Thank you, James. I see that the orig­i­nal album from gen­eral Dubey is no longer view­able online at the Indian Archive, pos­si­bly because it has since been pub­lished as a book. It’s a pity, as this album had some really intense images that went beyond the purely reg­is­tra­tive func­tion of sou­venir pho­tographs. If you google the Ramzak Album you can find it eas­ily. Here is a story on the man him­self, mr. Dubey, who was a cen­te­nar­ian in 2009, but passed away shortly after: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?240101

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#Data_Rush_Days: Now you get another rea­son to go visit Gronin­gen, the city where pub­lic space feels like a huge liv­ing room, where res­i­dents bring their ceramic mugs with them on the bike, and where you can see locals cross­ing the street wear­ing piya­mas, their daily clothes and fresh undies tucked under one arm as if on the way to the dorm show­ers. And where you can rent bikes at the train sta­tion for a tour of the Noorder­licht Pho­tog­ra­phy Inter­na­tional Photofes­ti­val.

Motorists woke up one mid-70s morn­ing to find new one-way streets made direct crosstown jour­neys impos­si­ble by car. Forty years later Gronin­gen boasts two-thirds of all trips made by bike … and the clean­est air of any big Dutch city

Yosuke Sakoda, another one of the con­tes­tants of the Tokyo Inter­na­tional Pho­tog­ra­phy Fes­ti­val (competition.tipf.jp/), is some­one I may have oth­er­wise over­looked when pass­ing by his reg­u­lar por­to­lio web­site, but then there was this small series he has about a Zoo, set very much apart from his com­mer­cial work. Maybe it doesn’t amount to much, or you may think the work is cheesy (should be re-edited?) but it just stayed with me for that split sec­ond too long to let it go with­out a men­tion. (But I con­fess to have a spe­cial thing for ani­mals in pho­tographs).

Call for appli­ca­tions: Pro­gram for Emerg­ing Artists from South Asia

To apply, you must be a South Asian artist of any medium who uses your work to draw atten­tion to the areas of eco­nomic, pol­icy, and social issues of your par­tic­u­lar con­text. Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion will be paid to artists whose work is related to SAI’s ongo­ing research projects: southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/projects/.

Your coun­try of res­i­dence must be within South Asia (A̲f̲g̲h̲a̲n̲i̲s̲t̲a̲n̲,̲ ̲B̲a̲n̲g̲l̲a̲d̲e̲s̲h̲,̲ ̲B̲h̲u̲t̲a̲n̲,̲ ̲I̲n̲d̲i̲a̲,̲ ̲M̲y̲a̲n̲m̲a̲r̲,̲ ̲N̲e̲p̲a̲l̲,̲ ̲P̲a̲k̲i̲s̲t̲a̲n̲,̲ ̲o̲r̲ ̲S̲r̲i̲ ̲L̲a̲n̲k̲a̲), with par­tic­u­lar pref­er­ence for artists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myan­mar, Nepal, or Sri Lanka, as SAI seeks to cre­ate unique oppor­tu­ni­ties for to engage with artists from coun­tries that have less rep­re­sen­ta­tion at Har­vard.This oppor­tu­nity is to meant to rec­og­nize and show­case the art­work of up-and-coming artists who would greatly ben­e­fit from facil­i­tated con­nec­tions with Har­vard fac­ulty and stu­dents, the oppor­tu­nity to show their work at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, and strengthen their con­tin­ued work in their coun­try of ori­gin.

#Data_Rush_Days: With minor hick ups such as the hack of ‘smart’ car or awe over the satel­lite dri­ven har­vest­ing sys­tems, the inter­net of things has begun to appear on the hori­zon of the under­stand­ing of the gen­eral pub­lic (which means most of us in the devel­oped world). But are we pay­ing enough atten­tion to the ram­i­fi­ca­tions?

Future For­ward news­pa­per The Guardian web­site has ded­i­cated a sec­tion explor­ing a vari­ety of issues sur­round­ing the Inter­net of Things, to inform, alarm and acti­vate us.